Roasted Bell Peppers Recipes

I recently bought beautiful jumbo artichokes at Costco. I would normally steam them and pair them with an aïoli sauce to dip the artichoke leaves in, but today I felt like making a roasted bell pepper flavored mayonnaise.

The result is a creamy, tasty sauce with an appealing, bright red color. As a reminder of the flavor in the sauce, I garnished the top with the finely chopped roasted bell peppers.

With the beautiful summery weather we're having, a refreshing savory mille-feuille that consists of bulgur is ideal to cool off. A mille-feuille in French literally translates to "thousand leaves" but in fact it's just a fancy name for layered puff pastry (the famous Napoléon).

I flavored the bulgur with marinated artichokes, red, green and yellow roasted bell peppers, shiitake mushrooms and a lot of mint. The pastry layers were simply brushed with an egg wash, sprinkled with herbes de Provence and a little cheddar cheese and baked until completely puffed. I tried to create a visually appealing dish bursting with colors and invigorating flavors, and i have to say, mission accomplished. Remember, we eat with our eyes first!

My husband Lulu just bought the new Breville convection toaster oven. The first thing that came out of his mouth when we opened the box was, "We have to inaugurate the oven by using that pizza setting." The next day, I bought ready-made garlic and herb pizza dough and got very excited about trying our new machine.

It didn't take much time for me to come up with a pizza topping selection. It came naturally to make it fairly healthy: a few tablespoons of tomato sauce, a bit of aged Cheddar cheese, baby artichoke hearts, oil-cured black olives, roasted bell peppers and fresh sweet basil. I could have added pine nuts at the end but I wanted to avoid any nut allergies (one family member has them). Needless to say, the oven and pizza were a hit. It took 30 minutes to prepare and bake last night's meal: mission accomplished!

Our family brunch this weekend was delightful but that doesn't mean it took us hours to prepare it. I had ready-made blueberry blossoms (individual free-form fruit pies) that I had stored in the freezer, so my only additions were a quiche and quinoa stuffed bell peppers on a bed of roasted bell pepper coulis.

I especially loved preparing the quinoa dish. It was colorful, flavorful and nutritious. I cooked the quinoa slightly longer till it became slightly clumpy, so when I seasoned it with a basil vinaigrette, sun-dried tomatoes and blue goat cheese, the quinoa mixture was easy to fill into the bell pepper "cups". The bell pepper sauce added brightness, thanks to the addition of tomato paste and freshly squeezed lemon juice, and contrasted really well with the sharpness and pungency of the cheese.